Animal Sociology and Advocacy

 

Where the notion of animality is mostly driven by biologism and general nonhuman animal objectification (philosophical, religious, legal, scientifically, and so forth) >

being “for animals”, being an “animal ally”, does not mean that these advocates share a similar view in their exact ideas of animal rights, ethics, animal lib, etc. >

Like in human rights and environmentalism/environmental rights, you get exactly all possibilities of possible worldviews, hopefully trying untangle the damage done.

Antispeciesist Animal Sociology, Gruppe Messel

Faunacide and Ecocide

Nonhuman and human animal friends are confronted with a one-sided anthropogenic faunacidal war against nonhuman animality and animalness.

This one-sided destruction war runs parallel to the ecocidal war, by which Homo sapiens denies the entire animality its natural habitat and tries to deprive them of it by arbitrariness. Everything nonhuman is destroyed in its own reality.

Gruppe Messel

And: on Tierrechtsethik.de – a bilingual page – you can find a broad range of toughts on Animal Sapiens, Animal Sociology and subjective activism … .

Decolonialism doesn’t explain forms of nonhuman objectification

Fragment

Decolonialism does not explain forms on nonhuman objectification and human “ruling via definition” in regards to “(nonhuman) animality” (which in itself is yet a term to be argued about and to be analyzed).

Decolonialism is one thing, Animal Objectification has its own histories, even when problematics converge and overlap e.g. in terms of ecological, eco-social contextualities. Brining decolonialism in as the solution for forms of animal objectification puts all hope on intra-human cultural diversity and ignores the dilemma of human definition of animal identity, which is simply not considered to be a historical major mistake seen in itself.

Decolonialism applies to intra-human constellations while the schism between “animal” and “human”, as some form of great hierarchically applied identities, stands outside of intra-human conflicts.

The notion of “human“ and the notion of “animal” differs with individuals, differs in different times and in different cultures. Bringing us all together under the assumption of functionability can’t solve the source of conflict between the predominant varied human notions of “human” and varied human notions of “nonhuman and animal” which resulted in today’s settings that we persistently have with animal objectifications.

Also, the problem with decolonialism to be applied as a tool to dismantle animal objectification raises the question of why the histories of animal objectification can’t be addressed with their own complicated specifics.

Antibiologistic Animal Sociology

Subversion and Oppression


Who pretends that subversion functioned differently in society than oppressive patterns, with both relying on similar basic assumptions about the human-animal-nature schisms – mostly in regards to the phenomenons of “existential meaningfulness” and the question of “self-authority”?
antibiologistic animal sociology

Trauma 1

When nonhumans are forcibly subjected to trauma, it does produce trauma, but translates into a problematic that a biologistic approach to nonhumans won’t be able to unravel. Trauma occurs in context with all fine tunings of psyche and mind – can’t ever be understood by violence.

A Nonhuman can’t be reduced to a symbol

Antibiologism in antispe

CN: Animal Symbolism vs Animal Mythologies

A start to my argumentation:

Animals as symbols is a dangerous terrain to step on, since

1.) images are to be seen in contexts of concrete modes of usage and are never stand-alone, absolute “symbols”.

2.) When you have an epistemic background in which animals are mythological, they can never be reduced to symbols – or would you call deities or your god or your friend or ideals appearing anywhere to ever be just a “symbol”?

A symbol is a proxy for something else that it stands for. When it’s used to refer to real existent individuals you ethically enter a slippery slope, you start reducing the world to pictograms. Reducing the receptive interpretations of animal representations to “animal symbolism” fails to see the intricate languages expressed about human/animal relationships e.g. in arts but also in the iconographies of daily speciesism.

I wrote an English fragment on a difference between symbolism and mythology with this text: https://www.simorgh.de/objects/a-fragment-on-insect-mythologies/

I extended this draft in German here:

E-Reader: Gruppe Messel 2018 / 4. Jg. 1 (2018), Heft 4. ISSN 2700-6905, https://farangis.de/reader/e-reader_gruppe_messel_2018_4.pdf

And now I should translate my thoughts back to English. I will try to do this sometime hopefully soon … :

Ein Fragment über Insektenmythologien und Darstellungen von Insekten, und weshalb Erklärungen mittels Symbolismus nicht ausreichen um bestehende Korrelationen zu erklären

Soweit wir zu diesem Zeitpunkt herausfinden konnten, handeln die bekanntesten Mythologien über Insekten und ähnliche Invertebraten von: Bienen, Schmetterlingen, Spinnen, Skorpionen, Ameisen, Zikaden und den Skarabäus-Käfern … . Welches Ansehen welche Insekten wann genossen und warum, steht offen. In einigen Zeiten, Kulturen und Geographien wurden die Tiere oder einige Gruppen dieser, zumindest freundschaftlich, in anderen feindlich dargestellt. Insekten in Mythologien werden zumeist als ein Phänomen gedeutet, das sich primär über einen „Symbolismus“ erschließen soll. Es scheint, dass Autoren / Forscher meinen, es sei schwer vorstellbar, dass beispielsweise der Skarabäus (der im ägyptischen Pantheon dem Gott Kheper zugeordnet wurde), ein ‚Mistkäfer’ also, für mehr als allein das geschätzt wurde, was Menschen ihm, im Sinne ihrer eigenen anthropozentrischen Konzepte der Welt, derer Bedeutung und des Universums, zuschrieben. Was, wenn aber die frühen Ägypter beispielsweise eine Welt mit einem einzigartigen Wert im Leben und in den Aktivitäten der Skarabäus-Käfer gesehen hätten?

Es wäre doch möglich, dass es faszinierend war zu beobachten, wie die Käfer dieses Rund aus Erde und Dung gerollt haben, und dabei dahingehend Überlegungen anzustellen, welche Art des Sinnempfindens die Käfer der Existenz und dem Sein auf der Erde überhaupt selbst ‚lebten’. Tiere haben Vernunft, Tiere haben Sinn. Tiere denken. Vielleicht verfügten manche alten Zivilisationen und Kulturen noch über die Fähigkeit und über ein Interesse daran, nm-Tiere als tierliche Kulturen zu betrachten. Ein kleiner Käfer, der einen Ball gleich einem Planeten rollt, aus dem ein neues Insektenleben schlüpfen würde … . Das ist mehr als ein Symbol.

Ein typischer Gedanke, den man im Bezug auf nichtmenschliche Tiere und die Natur hinsichtlich von Mythologien antrifft, ist, dass Menschen der Natur immer nur im indirekten Sinne eine Bedeutung zugeordnet hätten. Menschen können aber doch auch gedacht und gefühlt haben, dass die Natur tatsächlich eine Bedeutung hatte, und dass Natur (und somit Existenz) überhaupt Bedeutung sei.

Zusätzlich sollte bedacht werden, dass wenn wir solch einer Beziehung in der Mythologie das Gewicht unserer heutigen Definition von „Symbolismus“ aufbürden wollen – das heißt wenn wir beispielsweise sagen, dass Insekten bloße Symbole anthropomorpher Attributisierungen gewesen seien – dann sollten wir doch immerhin die epistemologische Geschichte des „Symbols“ und die Etymologie dieses Begriffes näher betrachten, um Licht auf das Konstrukt zu werfen, von dem wir damit Gebrauch machen.

Interessant ist, dass selbst im Bezug auf unsere Gegenwart wir die Verwendung von Tierbildern in mehr oder weniger ähnlicher Weise deuten. Wir sehen das Tier als nicht viel mehr als einen Symbolismus.

Die Beziehung zur faktischen Gegenwart des ‚Tieres als Subjekt’, das unser sozialethisches Miteinander relevant werden ließe, spielt seitens des Künstlers sowie auch seitens des Betrachters für Kunstkritiker, Kunstwissenschaftler und Kunsthistoriker zumeist noch eine untergeordnete und eher indirekte Rolle, bei der in erster Linie die Subjektivität-des Menschlichen in Bezugnahme auf ‚das Menschliche‘ im Zirkelschlüssen zum Gegenstand des Sinnes von Kunst wird (und bleiben soll).

Der Bezug auf das dargestellte Tier und das Tierliche wird als indirekt gedeutet, auch wenn ein direkter Bezug intentioniert oder zumindest auch mit enthalten ist. Die alleinige Direktheit, die zugelassen wird, ist die objektifizierte und objektifizierende Haltung zum nm-Tier und zum Tierlichen. Die Direktheit wird Instrumentalisiert. Die Tendenz zur Verzwecklichung bei Anthropomorphismen in Tierdarstellungen macht die Beziehung noch unsichtbarer. So können wir kaum mehr von einer Micky Maus auf eine echte Maus schließen, da hier die Maus in der Art Darstellung nur noch ein dem Menschen gefälliges Bild verkörpern soll. Der Bezug zum nm-Tier bleibt aber relevant, denn sonst hätte man ebenso eine nicht zoomorphe Gestalt wählen können als zentralen ästhetischen Bildnisfaktoren. Wir sollten uns die Beziehungen zwischen darstellenden und dargestellten Subjekten viel genauer und tiefgreifender betrachten.

Manchmal muss ‘Neues’ entstehen, in der Form, dass alte Ambiguitäten ihre Klärung finden können: So müssen wir heute klären, warum “Tier” aus menschlich-moralischem Erwägen über ‘Wert, Sinn, Freiheit, Würde … ‘ die Stellung eines Antagonismus (zum ‘menschlichen Ideal’) von herrschenden Mehrheiten humaner Kulturgebilde zugeordnet bekam.

Animality and conceptual corners


Why treat nonhuman concerns in assigned fields, instead of debiologizing the typical stances on animality? “Being a human” is still taken as a sociological state, while “nonhuman behaviour” is routinely relegated into the categories of being biologically driven/dominated.
– Animality can be seen in debiologized ways.
– Embracing existential plurality means wider perspectives than anthropocentrism are required
We can mutually learn as social and ecological beings.
antibiologistic antispeciesist animal sociology

Speciesism and deprivation (1)


Nonhumans are constantly put into a Kaspar Hauser-like situation, where it is assumed that imprisonment and deprival from > social bonds and contexts experienced in relative freedom > creates a justification for further and deeper going discriminatory means, until finally the affected is free to any abuse by anyone of the ruling human collective.
antispe sociology

Cognitions and sentiences in their own ways

Can anybody tell me why anyone needs scientific proof about animal cognition and sentience, etc. Address the individual/group themselves to get an answer in and under their own terms!

Those middlemen are never authorized to judge about congnitions/sentiences that they most likely don’t even understand – by measuring limited criteria with limited parameters.

Those middlemen see the animals in question in oversimplified ways, in relation to factual reality, just to offer some well meant biologistic data about your “species” in question.

They’d never use such parameters to describe themselves, as humans, but nonhumans can supposedly be objectified and limited in such scientific ways.

Nonhumans are social subjects/selves/agents not biological objects.

antispeciesist animal sociology

***

Recent thoughts I tweeted about animal allyship when it turns weird: https://twitter.com/tiere_am_rhein/status/1279764646757629960

Weird when people call the human friends of a nonhuman animal their “dad” e.g.,
blurring out that this nonhuman has own parents ( – and these nonhuman families have tragic histories …),
while talking at the same time about what’s supposed to be radical antispeciesism. #antispe

Weird also when humans pose with single nonhumans for photos, acting as if being with a human was the greatest thing, and socialising for nonhumans with other nonhumans would be a bit secondary at that moment. #anthropocentrism

Their is a lot of these type of weird things going on the “our” (the vegan/AR) movement … strikes me weird.

***


Scrap the biologistic speciesism that leads you to assume that nonhumans wouldn’t know that the/ir entire world is being oppressed.
A reductive concept of intelligence leads you to think of nonhumans as having to be pressed into the human concepts of how to measure perception.

The bad thing is that we still run around with views of animals and animality that are not much different to the “animal-machine” model (by Descartes), only on an “advanced”/”diversified” biochemical level. The idea that animals are acting in causalistic ways is still similar.

[1] Eine Frage, die mit einer Frage beantwortet werden muss … Haben Tiere Vernunft und können Tiere denken? https://simorgh.de/about/die-frage-nach-dem-tierlichen-denken-ist-mit-einer-gegenfrage-zu-beantworten/

The german artgerecht is a speciesist term

A very biologistic term: “artgerecht”

The German language holds a term that describes that there can be things/actions by humans that are “artgerecht” for nonhuman animal species. That there human actions/treatments that are suitable for a specific species. This term stems mostly from animal agriculture to legitimate their imprisonment and killing of nonhumans and from zoologists classifying nonhuman animals by defining in a reductive way their specific typical “needs” (…).

Humans wouldn’t want to reduce themselves onto categorical needs such as: foraging, territorial behaviour and reproduction. The term “artgerecht” exactly invites you do see nonhumans and their behaviour basically in such reductive way. All behaviour is classified and traced back to some categories humans hold a definitory might over.

Ecological complexity in regards to nonhuman animal sociology is not really a subject for anyone who applies such typical form of biologistic speciesism. The tragic thing is that many people in the German speaking countries use exactly this term when they seek to defend nonhuman animals, so this kind of terminology is not being reflected critically at all. Like they want justice for nonhumans, but they also want to keep pigeonholing nonhumans biologistically in such fundamental ways.

Meaningful, super complex behaviour becomes belittled with clichés of nonhuman species behaviour.

It’s a term that leaves nonhumans in their situations where they are exposed to human definition, when allies use such term, they are not making these settings visible.

 

***

“Artgerecht” bases much on the concept of “instinct” – which is one of the most questionable concepts to encounter nonhuman animals and animality with

Fragment continued …

“Artgerecht” alsways means the setting is given or influenced by humans.

Interesting is also that the rethorics of the > deliberate or wanted impact of human actions depending on species > which implies that a nonhuman is or should be treated (indirect passive role attributed to nonhumans) “artgrecht” in a manner predertermined by frames humans construct and prepare for the nonhuman, are always scrutinously chosen fitting to each different setting:
labs, farms, households, … and that dependent on how people classify each of the species …
 
So “artgerecht” means: any generic biologistic speciesism, while it consciously pretends to be meant to some advantage for the nonhumans within contexts of human definitory spaces.
 
It never means the nonhuman animals are understood as self-creative active agents in any environment in a sense beyond instinct, beyond biologistic and/or any other determinism for nonhuman animal behaviour.
Any behaviour becomes subject to reductive interpretations. No open space in terms of definitions is allowed from the human defining side.

***

Fragment three

“Artgerecht” always means the setting is given/influenced by humans.

Interesting is how rhetorics, that imply that a nonhuman is or should be treated (…) “artgerecht”, tend to just modify ideas/institutions of domination.

The details for the staged normalcy are always chosen carefully dependent on setting and animal group:

labs – agriculture – captivity – mingling with wildlife.

The idea behind the progress supposedly aimed at by the “artgerecht” treatment/measure (…) always sets forth that a nonhuman is basically instinctual.

This is the old prejudice about nonhuman animality not be self-creative….